The New iPad And Responsive Web Design

It is resolutionary. The new iPad got a display that provides more pixels than your HDTV. In your pocket, in your hand, everywhere you want it. So how can it be possible that a small group of people starts complaining like four year old Timmy that just realized that his visit in the dental clinic will not be the promised Disney Land trip?

I am talking about user interface and experience designers specialized in web development and design (formally known as webdesigners). Luckily most of us realized that responsive web design a good idea. If you do not know what I am talking about let me give you a short introduction to the topic before we talk about what the new iPad means for our work.

Responsive Web Design

Today we use a wide variety of devices. We visit websites with our iPads, iPhones, some confused people with their Android things - just kidding, luv U the same way as the Apple evangelists ;) - and sometimes, in quiet corners, when no one could possibly notice it, we do the most uber lame thing mankind can imagine. We use a computer with a nice, big screen.

Now all those devices have different screen resolutions. People understood at some point that it is not optional anymore if you can view a website on a mobile device. Mobile sites emerged. Most of the time known as "the creepy shit that hides all informations I want with the subdomain "m" in the URL which I cannot change". I think we all agree that a witch-hunt would have been an appropriate reaction.

Webdesigners noticed that users were not happy. Some of them even cared about those bloody leeches that always complain about something and just do not appreciate the art, all the passion and the newest Photoshop filters the designer put in his work. They came up with JavaScript solutions. And it kind of worked and got better.

Fast forward. 2011 / 2012. People understand that HTML and CSS can actually be used to design and style sites and that JavaScript should be used to move parts of the page away from the server to the client. Not necessarily for design purposes or only in small bits.

Introducing Media Queries

Today it is nearly a standard that you use media queries to serve different styles. There are many advantages, some shortcomings, but the two positive reasons everyone should see:

So beside many arguable arguments why media queries are the superior alternative for responsive web design we should be able to agree on those two.

You have some options to check your device and based on them decide which stylesheet is sufficient to provide the best user experience. The most common and I think the only ones you really need are

In some cases device-width and device-height could provide some value.

Ignoring Responsive Web Design Is An Option

My last two designs, hopelesscom and blaze it (sorry, German only) currently ignore responsive web design. Why? That is really easy to answer. Both were pushed out because they needed to go live. Responsive web design is something you put on top of a great design that works on every device. I made sure they are usable and follow certain standards but they do not use different stylesheets for different devices nor are they tuned to the last bit.

But sometimes you have to move stuff like responsive web design to some future release and just make sure there is something that works. If you are in this position let me just tell you two things:

Just because responsive web design is the new black does not mean that you have to wear it. Do not screw up is another thing. Even if you ignore media queries, relative font sizes and everything else. Make sure your design works on every device with any resolution. If this is the case you can ignore everything else. You accomplished enough for a quick "it needs to be released. NOW!" situation. Just add it sometime later. Really, add it. I mean it.

Why Does The New iPad Change The Game?

Let us assume you want your design to be responsive. You start looking at devices and their resolutions. In the end it always comes down to the question "is my user able to use my page without trouble". This means:

Most designers used to create different stylesheets to cover the common resolutions. 480, 1024 and above. Some hard-core stylesheet fans created up to six to eight versions. God save them when they have to add something new and where stupid enough to ignore less or Sass. Even with those two it would be a pain in the ass. In a perfect scenario you need two stylesheets. Yes, I said two.

Use relative values instead of fixed ones and you are nearly set. Of course it is a bit harder, takes some time to develop but most of the time this will scale for nearly every desktop user. It would even scale for mobile users but they deserve their own stylesheet. Why?

Bandwidth. While a desktop user can easily load 5MB fonts, 3MB JavaScript and 10MB images - yes I am a bit exaggerating but you get the point - a mobile user is most of the time on a slow 3G connection. LTE is currently no standard and sometimes they even have to use Edge or GPRS. Minimize page loading time. Optimize images and JavaScript for size and use less fonts. Rendering on mobile devices is fast, downloading stuff is not. This alone is the best reason for a mobile stylesheet.

Now thanks to the new iPad the game changed and we have new rules.

Can I Haz More Than FullHD?!

Look at the numbers. We are talking about 2048x1536 pixels. Stunning 264 dpi. Show me more screens with this resolution and dpi numbers. Now most designers use media queries and just add stuff and higher resolution images. Skip three paragraphs back. Bandwidth. Proving a stylesheet with images that fits the new iPad would make the site nearly unusable on mobile networks.

Now the rules changed. You cannot make your assumptions based on the screens width and height anymore. If you do so your users will not really like you anymore. But what options do we have?

I would prefer option one. More stylesheets always mean more work when you have to change or maintain your site. Adding complexity is not a good idea. If you are a web designer I can see why you use eight or now nine stylesheets. But sadly impressing people has nothing to do with effective and efficient client work.

I will write a follow up post, suggesting how to use media queries and how to optimize your site for screen and mobile usage. Just some basic rules some web-user-interface-experience-designer-engineers-whatever will look down on and tell me that there is way more room for creating different styles, squeezing in some extra pixels and whatever. In my opinion there are only two things that really matter: Stunning designs that work on every device and are a pleasure to use and ease of maintenance. And you can accomplish this with one or two stylesheets.

How To React To The New iPad?

I suggest we just use something that is already available, but most of us ignored, because we just did not need it. Let us praise media queries that check the resolution. If it is 264dpi we can be kind of sure for now that we are displaying stuff on a new iPad. Even if you ignore zooming and scrolling, add some images that are compressed and remove some fonts.

I fear that this will only be a short-time solution and that we will have to come up with something better. Maybe we have to go back to JavaScript. The only displays I know that have such a high dpi count are retina displays and the only one running a resolution that falls in the desktop segment is the new iPad. But I am sure we will see more screens with a high dpi count in the future and at this moment we need a different solution.

User Want Sharp Stuff

Till now we discussed a perfect bubble where everything is designed to make our life as comfortable as possible. Our own little world with pink unicorns vomiting rainbows. But there is one point I did not talk about.

Scaling down images and removing fonts is not without risk. People buy iPads to surf at home without the need for a laptop or desktop. They buy it to experience the full web. Removing fonts and delivering low quality images would be an offense. They do not care about mobile users, they have wifi and they do not care about bandwidth.

The biggest question we have to answer is "do our users use the iPad with 3G / LTE or on wifi?". I often use 3G, roughly between 15 and 30 hours a month. From my point of view this is a pretty high number and I am sure I would be not as amused as I always am when I have to wait for a page to download 20MB. Besides the fact that connections, especially in trains, are not always stable and pages that take some time and bandwidth are not always viewable.

My new iPad will arrive in (hopefully) two weeks and from this point I will be using it on 3G, too. And more people will do this. Looking at some numbers I believe that we are really a minority. And as long as it is not possible to check user bandwidth before deciding which stylesheet to deliver to mobile users, we should just shut up and be happy about high quality content when we are hardcore couching.

You can only lose this game. Either you punish high resolution wifi users or you screw mobile users up. According to numbers I tend to screw up mobile users till there is a better and especially viable solution. Our best option are high resolution images with a degree of compression that is okay but also allows a small file size.

The new iPad definitely changes the way we have to think about our designs but it should currently not influence our way we do it. At least not until we can react to bandwidth. All options I know (like parsing request headers) are not viable or as accurate as they have to be to work reliable.

>> posted on March 11, 2012, midnight in apple, frontend, web